David Marr was shocked to discover forebears who served with the brutal Native Police in the bloodiest years on the frontier. Killing for Country is the result – a soul-searching Australian history. This is a richly detailed saga of politics and power in the colonial world – of land seized, fortunes made and lost, and the violence let loose as squatters and their allies fought for possession of the country – a war still unresolved in today's Australia.

This irreverent, controversial account is sure to be one of the most talked-about publications of election year 2010 - a ground-breaking, in-depth profile that traces Kevin Rudd's years in Queensland, in China, in opposition and finally in government. Based on extensive research, observation and interviewing, it examines the forces that have made Kevin Rudd and the way he wields his power. Marr investigates both the fragility of Rudd's hold on the Labor leadership, and considers what he mi...

The leading Catholic in the nation and spiritual adviser to Tony Abbott, Cardinal George Pell has played a key role in the greatest challenge to face his church for centuries: the scandal of child sex abuse by priests. In The Prince, David Marr investigates the man and his career: how did he rise through the ranks? What does he stand for? How does he wield his authority? How much has he shaped his church and Australia? How has he handled the scandal? Marr reveals a cleric at ease with powe...

Dark Victory is not only a fascinating description of past events: between the lines there are dark portents of repercussions yet to come.'John Button, The AgeMarr and Wilkinson have pulled together the whole confronting tale of how through iron will, subterfuge, disregard for conventions of a civilised seafaring nation, the misuse of secret intelligence and the use of military force against the helpless, the federal government closed its borders in the qu...

Available again, an influential book that offers a framework for understanding visual perception and considers fundamental questions about the brain and its functions.David Marr's posthumously published Vision (1982) influenced a generation of brain and cognitive scientists, inspiring many to enter the field. In Vision, Marr describes a general framework for understanding visual perception and touches on broader questions about how the brain and i...

Tony Abbott: prime minister in waiting. David Marr: the nation’s leading biographer and investigative journalist. In Quarterly Essay 47, David Marr goes beyond the clichés - Dr No, mad monk, gaffe-prone, budgie-smuggling gym junkie - to look at the man as he is and reveal what kind of prime minister he might be. This is a unique portrait of a unique politician. Marr shows Abbott as part reactionary and part pragmatist, part fighter and part charmer, deeply religious and deeply political. B...

George Pell: leader of the Catholic Church in Australia, confessor to Tony Abbott. David Marr: the nation's leading biographer and investigative journalist. Cardinal George Pell is the most prominent Catholic leader in Australia at a time when the Church's handling of sexual abuse is being closely investigated. He is also the confessor of prime-minister-in-waiting Tony Abbott. In Quarterly Essay 51, David Marr investigates the character and actions of George Pell: how does he wield his aut...

John Howard has the loudest voice in Australia. He has cowed his critics, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced NGOs, censored the arts, prosecuted leakers, criminalised protest and curtailed parliamentary scrutiny. Though touted as a contest of values, this has been a party-political assault on Australia's liberal culture. In the name of "balance", the Liberal Party has muscled its way into the intellectual life of the country. And this has happened because w...

Amidst the revolutionary euphoria of August 1945, most Vietnamese believed that colonialism and war were being left behind in favor of independence and modernization. The late-September British-French coup de force in Saigon cast a pall over such assumptions. Ho Chi Minh tried to negotiate a mutually advantageous relationship with France, but meanwhile told his lieutenants to plan for a war in which the nascent state might have to survive without allies. In this landmark study, David Marr ...

Emergent Teaching inspires teachers to teach with more spontaneity and creativity within an educational environment that is highly constrained. It demonstrates, through descriptive stories, creative strategies and provides an intellectual foundation for emergent teaching. The authors show how teachers can relate subject matter to students’ lives and experience. They illustrate rituals and processes that help establish a caring learning community. Finally, the book applies the theories of c...

Phu Rieng was one of many French rubber plantations in colonial Vietnam; Tran Tu Binh was one of 17,606 laborers brought to work there in 1927, and his memoir is a straightforward, emotionally searing account of how one Vietnamese youth became involved in revolutionary politics. The connection between this early experience and later activities of the author becomes clear as we learn that Tran Tu Binh survived imprisonment on Con Son island to help engineer the general uprising in Hanoi in ...

Fresh, exciting and vividly readable, this is popular history at its very best.Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey, political journalist Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to th...